To Claire, With Regret
by Softly-Sighing
Summary: Claire Standish was brutally murdered only months after the fateful Saturday morning that had brought the Breakfast Club together. Her killer was never caught and the lives of Allison, Andrew, Brian and John were changed forever. Three years later they're returning to the crime scene to lay the matter to rest once and for all.
1. Brian

The Breakfast Club, what was left of it, hadn't made any attempt to reunite since Claire Standish's death in the winter of 1984. Each had their own reasons, even apart from the massive fallout that befell Shermer in the weeks that followed.

Brian Johnson lay on his dorm room bed, shifting his eyes back and forth from the paper in his hand to the white ceiling above him.

He'd read it already, but knew he'd have to read it again to really process what it said, to accept that it was even real. His thoughts, however, were getting the best of him. He hated feeling this way. He rarely allowed himself the privilege of free thinking. He preferred focus. As he'd delved into college he came to discover about himself that it wasn't truly an oppression set upon him by his parents, but instead was a genuine state of mind that he'd grown into on his own.

He glanced at the letter again, catching only the words "…we can't keep running..." in his sight before looking away. No. He couldn't do this. He couldn't afford time and precious mind power on this. Finals were coming up. Finals mattered. The past didn't. But even as those words went through his head he knew he didn't really believe it. As much as he wanted to put the Breakfast Club out of his mind, he never really could.

Biting at his thumbnail, Brian sat up with a start. _This is ridiculous_ , he thought, _being afraid to read something_. But that wasn't it, either. It was the _thinking_ that scared him. He had spent the last three years building up mental blocks in his mind against what had happened.

With a deep, haggard breath, Brian lifted the paper to his eye line again, determined to get it over with.

 _Brian,_

 _You have to know that we can't keep running from this._

 _On the 22_ _nd_ _. We're going back. You have to be there, and I know you will be. Andrew will be. I will be. John will be. We've gotta talk about this shit. Can you honestly say that you've slept through the night even_ _once_ _since that day? We've gotta fix this. I can't take it anymore, Brian. We're either going to figure out who did it or come to find out what we've known all along._ _I don't care how long it takes. I've been living like shit for three fucking years, Brian. You're doing your big boy college thing, but I know the truth. I know you're just as fucked as me. I'm sure Andrew and John are too. John probably the most._

 _-Allison R._

 _P.S. Don't bother trying to write me back, the return address is a phony._

He exhaled a breath he didn't realize he was holding as he crumpled the paper up into his fist. In the lines Allison had written he felt he'd traveled through years of time. And he felt sick to his stomach.

He flung himself from his bed, scrambling across the tile to the small trashcan he kept beneath his desk, just in time for his roommate to walk in and witness him vomiting violently.

"Whoa, Brian, what's the matter?" Brian could barely hear Gil's shaking, nervous voice over the sound of his own retching.

"It's fine," Brian finally managed to gasp the words out. But it wasn't fine. Nothing was. Nothing had been for years. His nausea turned to anger and he couldn't help himself from growling, "Nothing's ever going to fix it."

"Brian," Gil sounded even more shaken now, "Brian, what're you talkin' about, buddy?"

Brian spat one last time into the trashcan, sat back against his desk and tried to steady his breathing. Gil was still frozen in the doorway, frightened to see Brian Johnson in such a state. Brian's demeanor had been stable and quiet over the three years they'd known each other. Brian was always the same. But here, crumpled on the floor, smelling of vomit and sweat, Brian seemed to Gil unhinged. Gil knew right away this wasn't a sickness that had overtaken him, but a plague of his mind.

They remained in these positions for several minutes before Gil finally got brave enough to enter their shared room.

Brian didn't even look at him. Instead he was staring straight ahead at the wall, trying to sift through the muddied pool of thoughts in his head. The imagery flashing in his mind threatened to make him sick again. He gripped his khakis and held them tightly, letting himself ride the horrible waves of memories. He saw her, he saw Claire. She was there, tangled in a sheet. There was so much blood. Those sheets are ruined. Those sheets are _ruined_.

And Brian began to sob.

They never caught the killer because the killer was never determined. Not by a court of law, at least. Everyone in Shermer had come to their own conclusion, though: John Bender had done it. Of _course_ it had to be him. Everyone in Shermer knew about the Benders. Ned Bender was an alcoholic. It was no secret that he'd been beating his wife and son for years. Violence was in John Bender's blood. That's what they would say. Brian didn't believe it at first. Not because John was his friend, but because he knew how John felt about Claire. It wasn't love, it was something else. Something deeper and more complex. The change in John that came with Claire's death was obvious even to people who didn't know him.

The police interrogated Allison, Andrew, Brian and John relentlessly for weeks. Brian had been arrested and released several times over the course of a month. Each time a new piece of evidence was discovered they grabbed one of the four who were there when it happened. John was in and out more than the other three combined, though. Word around town eventually had police convinced he was involved and, soon enough, even Brian began to wonder if it really _had_ been John to do it. Brian grew to resent John, and quickly to resent Allison and Andrew too. _They'd_ put _him_ through this. He never would have been at that fucking hotel had it not been for the goddamn Breakfast Club.

Brian suddenly screamed a long, ghastly howl. Gil ran for get help.


	2. Andrew

Andrew couldn't believe he was doing this. He didn't even feel like he _was_ doing it. How had he ended up at the train station with a ticket in his hand? It was like his body moved and his brain went to sleep. But then, Andrew was used to that. He'd been well-trained as an athlete not to think, to just let your muscles do what they knew how to do. At some point, he guessed, that logic flooded into his everyday life. Conversations, eating, fucking, he did it all without ever really knowing it, feeling it. So, he figured he really shouldn't have been surprised when boarded the 2:20 a.m. train for Northbrook.

He leaned his head against the window as the train lurched to a start. Only an hour and he'd be home.

Andrew hadn't been back to Shermer since he left for college during the spring that followed Claire's death. He'd picked a town at random and announced to his parents that he'd be attending a community college in Norridge, a small suburb less than a half hour away by car. Of course, by that time, his already-strained relationship with his parents had been mercilessly put through the wringer. He'd lost his scholarship to the University of Texas in light of the murder accusations. None of them had ever been officially charged, but the arrests were enough. Things in the Clark household finally came to a head a month before Andrew left when he and his father got into a physical altercation that left his dad reliant on an oxygen tank.

Andrew squinted at his watch in the darkness. He felt mild surprise to find that he'd only been on the train for ten minutes. But, then, time _had_ seemed to slow a little more each day for him. It got to be agonizing. Days dragged, nights seemed endless. He wondered idly whether this was why he'd retreated more and more into the recesses of his mind.

He stuck his hand in the pocket of his high school letterman jacket, gently rubbing Allison's letter with his thumb and forefinger.

Allison. He hadn't let himself think of Allison in such a long time. Even when he first got and read her letter, he still wouldn't let his mind even conjure up her face.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting her in.

Her soft, dark hair. Her pale pink lips. He thought of her in school and out, how different she was with him than with others.

He had to shake himself out of it to stop himself from really feeling something.

He'd really hardly given any of them a thought since he left Shermer. Even Claire. He'd simply stopped thinking altogether. It was easier that way. He hadn't joined any of the community sports teams in all the years he'd spent in Norridge. He put passions as far from his mind as he could. He hadn't even gone to class since the first year he moved. He just worked his shitty overnights at that shitty little motel and went home to his shitty little apartment in his shitty neighborhood. Where he used to spend weekends at the Longhollow Lodge with the Breakfast Club, he now spent them with strangers gathered in his own home.

He squinted again at his watch. Only ten more minutes had passed. Usually the slow pace at which his hours progressed got to him, but now he appreciated it. He really didn't have a plan for what he would do once he arrived in Shermer. He had nowhere to go except, he supposed, to his parents' house.

He wondered then if Allison or John still lived in Shermer. He'd heard from someone that Brian was off in Evanston at Northwestern. If John _had_ stayed in Shermer he wondered what kind of shape he would be in.

Thinking of his old friends for the first time in years stirred up feelings within Andrew he wasn't prepared for.

He thought of those weekends they all spent together at the Longhollow. He couldn't remember whose idea it had originally been to start spending secret weekends together, but decided it didn't matter. What _did_ matter was that those had been the best nights of his life, whether he liked it or not. If the last three years were indicative of whatever future lay ahead of him, he knew it would never get better for him than that.

It had begun in April. They'd come to an agreement that they'd stay away from each other in school but were free to be themselves in each other's company on nights shared together at the hotel. They pooled their money together each week to get a room, making up whatever excuses to their parents they had to in order to get away.

As he let his thoughts slip away on their own he felt the timeline in his mind creep dangerously close to that December weekend. The weekend that was bringing them all back together again. Well, _almost_ all of them.

He shook his head again, knocking the thoughts loose and scaring them away. He cleared his throat and sat up straight, focusing hard on not focusing. Faintly, he smelled a strange, rusty odor, eerily familiar to him though he couldn't place where it was coming from.

He spent the rest of his train ride staring straight ahead, losing himself to nothingness, numbing his mind and body with each passing moment of silence. He didn't think about where he'd go when he got off the train. He didn't think about Claire's naked body in that bloody, bloody sheet. He didn't think about Allison's letter in his pocket. He didn't think.

The train came to a stop at the Northbrook drop off station. Andrew felt his legs lift him off his seat. I was almost 3:30 in the morning, but he wasn't tired. He was used to being up all night.

He got off the train and saw his breath float from his mouth in clouds, but he didn't feel the cold. He was the only one to get off at the Northbrook stop and he stood, hands in letterman jacket pockets, unmoving as the train started off behind him. Shermer. He was back. This town in which he'd been born, raised and destroyed. Three years seemed like such a long time to be away.

He started walking, not knowing where his feet would take him, but letting them lead anyway. The town was brightly lit with Christmas lights. Andrew vaguely realized that he hadn't even been aware that it was Christmastime. Christmas just blends in with the rest of the year when the only person in your life is you.

He passed a lamppost covered in flyers, but halted when he saw the familiar shock of red hair. He looked closer. Beneath a missing dog poster was Claire's face. JUSTICE 4 CLAIRE was painted in bright purple beneath the sweet, faded picture of his old friend.

Seeing her face so lively and smiling, though, forced Andrew to see in himself that same face faded and gray, mouth inhumanly agape. She was all wrapped in a sheet. She fell out of bed when the stabbing began. That's what the cops figured. God, her face was skewed into an eternal scream for help.

Andrew began to cry real, hot tears.

All alone in the dark of night, he put his hands to his face and leaned his head against the lamppost and the unleashed feelings he'd crammed down for years. He couldn't get John covered in Claire's blood out of his mind. She was in his arms. He'd just gotten right down in that puddle of red like he couldn't even see it. He had been the one to find her first. Had he really been the one to do it? Andrew didn't know. The John he knew would never have hurt any of them, least of all Claire. The John the town knew, though, fit the perpetrator profile perfectly. The town, though, hadn't seen John's face as he held Claire's lifeless, mutilated body in his arms, sticky with gore.

Andrew cried because Claire was gone. Andrew cried because Claire had undoubtedly spent her last moments alive in terrible fear and unimaginable pain. Andrew cried because Claire's picture was tacked up among lost dog and babysitters wanted posters. Andrew cried.

Andrew _felt._

He sank to the ground, his jeans immediately moistening in the snow. For the first time in years Andrew seemed to really feel _tired_. He was so used to overnight shifts and weekend partying. He slept when necessary but _only_ then. Now, though, having released from within him three years' worth of emotion, Andrew suddenly found himself to be exhausted. He shivered at a breeze that rippled through his hair. _Get up, dumbass. You'll pass out and freeze to death out here_ , he thought to himself. But then he wondered, would that really be such a bad thing?

He glanced back up at Claire's photo. _Justice 4 Claire_. The picked himself up, ignoring the screams coming from his tired legs and frozen feet. He had to get somewhere to sleep. He started walking. He was determining his own destination instead of submitting to his body's cries. He reached his parents' house within a half hour. He climbed as quietly as he could in through the window with the broken lock. Tiptoeing his way through the house, he reached the living room couch without waking his parents. He collapsed onto the old familiar plush, falling into a deeper sleep than he'd experienced since Claire Standish was still alive.


	3. John

John Bender's life ended with Claire's. Sure, he continued to breathe and function (barely), but he wasn't John Bender anymore. He was just alive, nothing more. Pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow, all the facets of emotion to make one human seemed to just melt together within him so that he felt no urge to separate one feeling from another.

He didn't even drink anymore. For months after it happened he'd guzzled down a fifth of Jack each night to keep himself numb. Soon, though, he found that he didn't need alcohol to do that for him.

John hadn't put any effort into living since he found Claire's body. Something broke in him the moment he saw her there on the floor. It was as though the connection he and Claire had shared had been a string pulled taut between them which, upon her demise, had snapped. He _felt_ it. He had been alone when he discovered her. He'd just sunk to his knees and crawled to her.

Unlike the others, John was prone to remembering that day and letting the events replay over and over in his head. For John, the worst memory wasn't the day he found her, but instead the time they'd spent together the night before.

He lay awake on the couch in his father's garage. The sun would be up soon. A faint, pink glow came through the window. He thought of her. There was always a pinkness about Claire. He closed his eyes and thought of Claire and the color pink. He recounted in his mind her pale blouses, her small nipples, her tubes of lipstick.

John Bender wasn't one for crying, and he never did shed a tear for Claire. He just couldn't. He didn't know how.

He opened his eyes when the pinks in his mind turned to reds. He wouldn't let himself ruin these thoughts of her pink flush with those of her scarlet wounds.

He thought instead of returning to the Longhollow Lodge with the others. He could hardly even picture such a scene in his mind.

He wondered if any of them really thought he killed her. He figured they must, and he couldn't blame them for thinking it.

John closed his eyes again.

They were all there again: December 21st, 1984. It was a Friday, as usual. School had let out two hours before, giving them each all the time they needed to grab their things, lie to their parents and make it to the hotel. The Longhollow Lodge was twenty minutes outside of Shermer. They would try their best to take separate bus rides, lest they be seen by someone from school with each other. Thinking back, John couldn't believe how much it had really meant to all of them to maintain a certain social image. Claire would still be alive if they'd just sucked it up. He felt an anger welling within him, only to be suppressed by Claire's smirking, bright face in his mind.

December 21st was different than the other weekends, though, because it was the first time that Claire and John had gotten a room for themselves instead of everyone crashing together.

It was the only night he would ever really have her to himself.

The memory was more painful to him than any other because it had been the best night of his life.

It was around two in the morning when Claire and John decided to retire to their own room, leaving Andrew, Allison and Brian for the night.

They'd been drinking and Claire leaned into him as they walked to their room next door. The weight of her against him made him feel warm inwardly and out. Playfully, he'd said, "Cherry can't hold her liquor so she makes _me_ hold _her_."

She'd giggled drunkenly at this. "I'm _walking_ ," she slurred to him. "You're just in my way." Had she been sober, this would have been bantering. Instead, she sounded more playful than sarcastic. She got this way whenever they drank together, letting her Miss Prissy walls come down. John was always amused. The keys to their door jingled in his hand as he unlocked the knob, seeing Claire from the corner of his eye dancing in the falling snow to no music.

He opened his eyes and found himself in his father's garage again.

The sun was up now. John exhaled harshly, as if he could breathe the memory out. He looked at his watch as he sat up. Almost 7:30. He'd be meeting with the Breakfast Club in about twelve hours.

He stood and his joints popped noisily with the effort. He wasn't much one for moving these days, and he probably would have packed on some pounds if he ever ate. He wondered passively what the others would look like. What had the years done to them? In fact, what had the years done to _him_?

He walked across the concrete to a small, grimy mirror mounted on the far wall of the garage amidst various power tools and shelves of junk. He squinted, wiped at the glass with his hand and squinted again. When was the last time he'd really looked at himself? For a horrifying moment he thought it was his father staring back at him. It was even more horrifying, though, when he realized it wasn't. It was him.

He'd always looked a little haggard. His home life was stressful and it had already aged him in a lot of ways. He had a streak of gray in his hair by the time he was only sixteen. But he was _sure_ his face had been softer before. Now it was rough, covered in dark stubble and creases.

Things for John had only gotten worse since Claire died. He slept at odd hours, always haunted by dreams of Claire, the girl he would've loved if he could have. If he had ever thought the town against him before, it was nothing compared to how he was treated in the months that followed the murder. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised that people assumed he did it. No one but Allison, Andrew and Brian knew about his connection to Claire. In fact, people from school assumed the two disliked each other. Still, though, John felt shock rip through him every time someone made the assumption of his involvement. He never, _never_ could have hurt Claire. But his reputation stood against him.

He was the only suspect ever officially considered, and he was finally relieved of suspicion in May the following year. By that point he had become a real shut-in. He couldn't leave his house without being verbally (and sometimes physically) attacked by angry members of the Shermer community. The Bender house was regularly vandalized. Windows were shattered, curse words were painted. Ned Bender would chase the vandals from his yard waving his handgun in the air, screaming belligerently. Afterward, he'd come back inside and use the metal weapon to beat John's face bloody. This became the routine.

But now, all that had passed. John's mother died of pneumonia the next autumn and the people of Shermer mercifully started to distance themselves from John Bender. John guessed they figured it was punishment enough for his mom to die and leave him alone with his father. Though it hurt John deeply to know that his mother died convinced that her son had committed the most heinous murder in the town's history.

John felt the scars on his left temple left by the butt of his father's gun. He touched them lightly with his fingertips, imagining them as Claire's lips kissing them gently. Each time they'd undressed with each other Claire would kiss the various scars that littered his flesh. He had teased her for doing it. Now, though, he longed for it.

He walked away from the mirror. He'd had enough of seeing himself. He went to the faded blue plastic tote bin in the corner near the door. He rooted through it, smelling the pieces of clothing as he pulled them out.

It was eight o'clock now. He knew his father would be up and going to work soon. He considered whether to wait another hour to make sure he would be gone before going inside, but ultimately decided to go in right then. _Fuck it_ , he thought. He headed in.

Ned Bender was seated at the kitchen table, smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper.

"It says right here," he said without looking at John as he came inside, "been three years since you killed that girly."

Ned grinned a malicious, toothless grin at his son. John swallowed hard and walked past him wordlessly.

"They're doin' some sorta big candle vigil again this year," Ned called after him as John slammed the bathroom door.

John squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to let the anger take over him. When he opened his eyes, though, there was his father staring back at him from the mirror again. And he couldn't keep himself from smashing the glass with his fist.


End file.
